I wrote about Qdoba’s (@QdobaMexGrill) clever email marketing a while back, and after some recent positive experiences with Qdoba, I decided I’d blog about them again. First of all, I’m a big fan of Chipotle. There’s even a running joke with my in-laws about how much I love the gourmet burrito chain. That being said, I haven’t been going to Chipotle as often as I used to. Part of it is because the closest Chipotle to my house is 4 miles away and the closest one to me at work is probably 8-9 miles away. Another reason is that because of slow economy, I’m watching what I spend more closely than ever.

Here’s where Qdoba comes in. Not only are there two Qdoba locations within about 2 miles of my house, but Qdoba is constantly sending out coupons through their permission email channels. When they launched their Craft 2 menu item last spring, they sent several emails letting their subscribers know about their Qdoba Craft Your Life microsite, which allowed you to play a short game, and rewarded you with a coupon at the end. The coupon was anything from a free order of chips & queso with the purchase of an entrée to a free entrée with the purchase of a drink.

Last fall, Qdoba  launched a promotion, Food Lovers Fighting Burrito Boredom, which allowed customers to make their own entrée online – which they can spice up however they want – in order to help fight burrito boredom. Just like with the previous promotion, Qdoba allowed users to place once a day per email address and awarded them with a different coupon of varying worth. Though the coupon portion of the promotion is over now, Qdoba has kept the microsite alive to continue to educate their potential customers.

Although the US has started to see economic growth in the past few quarters, high gas prices threaten to dampen some of that growth for this summer. For a fast casual restaurant like Qdoba, they certainly don’t want to dilute their brand’s quality perception by focusing solely on coupons, but by creating innovate campaigns like this, Qdoba is showing that they understand the economy we’re in now and are trying to build up brand loyalty for when the economy rebounds and discounting isn’t as common.

In addition to their promotions, Qdoba is also doing a great job of creating real conversation and interacting with their customers (below is a tweet I sent out that they quickly replied to).

This is the second in a new series of interviews with local leaders in the social media and technology industry that will be featured on Social Mediarology. Today’s interview is with Kyle Lacy of Brandswag, a social media training company based in Indianapolis and Oklahoma City.

Kyle Lacy – Brandswag

Kyle Lacy started Brandswag in June, 2007 with his college roommate. They started out as an identity design firm for website development and as of November, 2009, they moved into corporate training and development for social media. They work with companies with between 100 and 2,000 employees and train HR, Marketing, Sales, IT, Upper Management and other departments on the importance of social media as well as why and how to use social media. In short, they teach mid-to large sized companies how to use and implement social media.

Kyle recently published Twitter Marketing for Dummies and maintains a social media-focused blog at KyleLacy.com.

Why social media?

One, we’ve been using it for a long time. Facebook started while we were in college. We also saw a niche that we could brand in terms of being young, and we took advantage of it. I like how social media gives a voice to the consumer instead of the other way around, but we also saw a great opportunity and we jumped headfirst into it. Initially it was difficult, because people didn’t understand the concept, they didn’t understand why it mattered, but it’s getting better now and more and more people are wanting to learn about everything.

What are some next steps for DMOs in social media?

It’s not about creating profiles, it’s about figuring out where your customers are. I’ve had conversations with people where I’ve told them, “Don’t you dare go and create a [Facebook] fan page, there’s no reason for you to do it”. I think the biggest problem that we have right now is that organizations look at social and think it’s a completely separate entity from everything else. They have their marketing meeting and then they have their social media meeting, which is stupid because social is just another arm of marketing. It’s a communications platform. There’s no difference between it and direct mail, email marketing, they should all coexist with social and vice-versa.

What I would tell people is if you make a Facebook fan page, you’d better figure out if it’s making you revenue. If, after six months, it’s not making you revenue, you’re either not doing it right or you need to get rid of it. It’s cool to have the social media hype, but we’re not going to get to the past the point of just hype until people make sure this is a viable marketing platform for them. It will be a whole lot easier for everyone if they start measuring their social media initiatives.

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I just got an email from Qdoba Mexican Grill (click on the image at left to see a larger version) and it was a great example of creative permission email.

I signed up to receive emails from Qdoba when I became a member of their frequent purchaser card. I’ve received several other emails from them and they have all been very straightforward.

When I saw the Subject Line of this email (Stinky Brown Bag), my first thought was that the email was spam and I should delete it. Then I read it again and realized that it was from Qdoba. I’d bet that everyone who works in an office has received an email like this at some point in their career. By using a creative headline like this, Qdoba got me to open an email that I might not have opened otherwise.

I’d be very interested to see what Qdoba’s open rate was on this email. In addition to having a clever headline on the email, they followed up with clever content and offered a deal. This somewhat deceptive subject line is definitely not a tactic that should be used frequently, but Qdoba was able to highlight a special offer in a unique way.

This kind of creativity should be employed in more email campaigns. One of the most important parts of an email marketing campaign is the email subject. The better your subject is, the more people that will open up your email. Of course, you still need good content in the email, but can use good headlines to get your foot in the door.

Regardless of how you define the word ‘recession’, we’re definitely in a down economy. Local, State and Federal governments are taking in less tax money than expected, many businesses are losing money, budgets are being slashed across the board (especially in marketing and advertising) and many consumers are pinching every penny they can. While this all sounds very ‘doom and gloom’, it doesn’t have to be. There are effective ways to market to your customers, even in a slow economy like the one we’re in now.

I’ve been reading articles just about every day that talk about the opportunities that have arisen because of the slowdown in the economy and here are seven trends I’ve noticed (in no particular order):

• Email Marketing
  • Permission-based email blasts are still a great way to keep your consumers up-t0-date on things going on with your company. Unlike direct mail pieces, your consumers have requested to receive information from you via email. That gives you the opportunity to give your consumers what they want.
• Web Analytics Integration
  • There are several web analytics suites available, but whichever suite you decide to use, you should use one. Google Analytics is a good free option. I’ve found that one of the most useful features of Google Analytics it the ability to find out which search terms people used to find your site. That knowledge can help you better optimize your website’s content or assist in the creation of a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaign to push more traffic to your site.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • While there are many companies that specialize in SEO you can do some basic optimization on your own. Focus on keywords that relate to your business. If the copy on your website hasn’t been rewritten in a few years or even a few months, it’s probably time to put up some new copy. This will help the search engines find your site when users search for those keywords.
• Blogging
  • In addition to enabling you to get information out quickly and informally, blogging can also be good for SEO (see above). If you use your organization’s blog strategically, by using key words and focusing on specific topics, you can come to be seen as an authority in your field. Search engines love blogs because content is created frequently and is stored forever. Unlike a website where you change out the content on a page a few times a year, every time you create a new blog post, all the old posts are still there, continuing to be indexed by the search engines.
• Social Media engagement
  • In the same way that blogging is good for SEO, social media can be as well. By getting involved on different social media sites, your name gets out there more and, in addition to delivering information to your consumers in a new way, people will be able to find you in more places using search engines. (Click on the image on the right, you’ll notice that when I searched for “visit indiana” in google, our webpage came up, but so did our twitter page and our Visit Indiana blog. Those are two more opportunities for people to find us.)
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
  • Search engine marketing is a relatively inexpensive way to drive more traffic to your site. If you are working to optimize the content on your website for search engines and engaged in blogging and social media, you’re in a great place. But if you want to supplement that work with paid search listings, SEM is for you. I know that the Columbus Area CVB uses paid search and it’s also a part of our ongoing marketing plan as well. This summer, our office launched Live Indiana for our summer promotion. During the promotion, we targeted consumers we don’t typically target – specifically, motorcycle enthusiasts. Since we did not have a wealth of motorcycle content on our website, we purchased motorcycle related keywords in Google and Yahoo and were able to drive traffic to our Live Indiana motorcycle promotion through SEM.
• Social Media Advertising
  • Social media advertising, especially on sites like Facebook is another way to stretch just a few dollars a very long way. Facebook allows you to advertiser either a group or fan page on Facebook or an outside website. I created a mock-up ad we might have used for the motorcycles portion of Live Indiana this summer. I was able to target about 30,000 adults 18+ in Indiana and the surrounding states who have an interest in motorcycles and motorcycle riding. You can also dig down much deeper to target more specifically. You can also run your campaign based on ad views or on click-throughs. (click on the image for a larger version)
  • Columbus Area CVB launched a campaign in October called Chicks Click Here. The campaign features a website, blog and a Facebook group – Unforgettable Women. Cindy from the CVB will put up a post with more details about the campaign, but for just about $25 a month, they’ve run a pay-per-click campaign on Facebook and have been able to attract women from as far away as San Diego, Boston, Florida and everywhere in between, to join them in the Unforgettable Women group.

Many of us will experience budget cuts in the year to come, but by thinking strategically and investing some time and effort, you can stretch those limited marketing dollars in ways you haven’t stretched them before.

Have you already implemented some of these marketing tactics? If so, what results have you seen? If not, do you think you will look to internet advertising more over the next year?

Some sources:

• MediaPost – Social Media Wins In Marketers’ ’09 Plans
• BusinessWeek – Why Online Ads Are Weathering the Recession
• New York Times – Some Online Ads Thrive in a Miserable Economy